


Our Father

by sparxwrites



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Dehumanisation, Gen, Hurt Gabriel, Hurt No Comfort, Sabriel - Freeform, Whump, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-21 01:50:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/592085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The apocalypse is over, the humans have won, the world is safe. Everyone should be happy - other than those who object to the methods by which the world was made safe. Namely, by the enslavement of angels.</p>
<p>No one told Gabriel. No one warned him when he was brought back and dropped into the middle of an angel-hating world with nowhere to hide. And now he's lost everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Father

**Author's Note:**

> The first in what will possibly be a series of fics, set in an utterly self-indulgent slave!angel au, because I can. 
> 
> Also, for those of you who are unaware of this, in Middle English, ‘thy’ was the form of ‘you’ used to address familiars and friends (think ‘tu’/’du’ in French or German). ‘You’ was used as a more formal mode of address, to strangers or people more important than oneself. A vaguely important distinction to make in this fic.

_Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy-_

No. No, that’s all wrong. That makes it sound as if God actually gives a crap any more, when everything’s so obviously gone to hell in a handbasket and He’s just  _letting_  it happen. He shouldn’t even be praying any more, really – he’s long since lost his faith – but it’s an old habit, hard to break. Bred into him. Makes him sound like an animal, really, which is all he is to these people; cattle. A pet.

_Their Father, who is missing from Heaven, curséd be your name. Why have you forsaken us so?_

They’re coming for him. He knows they are. His year is up; whether this is a blessing or a curse… he will not pass judgement on that yet. It depends on where he ends up, who he ends up with.  _If_  he ends up with anyone.

Looking down at himself, that no longer seems like a certainty – he’s short, skinny, the soft flesh around his middle long ago turned concave. A runt. Not strong enough for hard labour, not broken in enough to be a house pet, and hardly pleasing on the eye even if the blood and filth were washed off, so he doubts anyone will buy him to use for pleasure.

Still. One never knows. It takes all types to fill a world.

Including slaves.

It hadn’t been like this first time around. When he died, the world was not like this – it was broken, twisted, flawed, but not  _this_. Not dark and terrifying. Not for him, anyway. He feared no one and nothing, other than his own brothers (and being alone, although he never said that, never admitted to it, because he always was).

Now, though, there is much to fear for an angel walking the world. Men with holy oil and lighters, Grace detectors and demons on a leash to sniff them out, men with collars that lock and do not undo, that bring an angel to their knees and strip their very soul, the light of their Father, from their grasp.

His Father didn’t warn him.

His Father brought him back, made him whole and alive and new, placed him back on the Earth he had loved so much amongst the humans he had once half-pretended to be.

His Father hadn’t warned him that those humans were no longer ignorant, that those humans wanted retribution – payment, a tithe, for the suffering inflicted on them by creatures of power.

He had always known humans were creative, in many ways. Of all the ways he had experience that creativity though, until then, pain had never been a part of it.

He knows now exactly how creative they can be with punishment.

No one told him any of this, when he was reborn. He has paid the price of ignorance heavily, has paid it a thousand times over in the marks of the whip on his back and thighs, in the bruises on his chest and stomach, the drying blood smeared across his broken lips and sealing one swollen eye shut. He has paid the price for his smart mouth in the ruin of his wings, gold tarnished with blood and filth and neglect to a dull, ragged brown, paid for it in the weeping sores from the wire net that bites into his skin and holds them still and aching against his back.

At first, he had fought, of course. Fighting brought pain, but he was no stranger to injury – or, he had thought so. Without Grace, everything was amplified, sensitised, so much sharper and more real and harder to ignore. He thinks it is, anyway; he has yet to experience kindness, gentleness with cut-off Grace. Has yet to experience much other than pain.

The pain overwhelmed him in the end. He had never realised, before, how far he would go to stop the pain. How far he would lose himself. It still surprises him sometimes, when he thinks about it; he tries not to think about it too often.

They come for him. Manhandle him out of his cage, shoulders catching on the bars at either side, and drag him to his feet. His footsteps are outlined in blood as they pull him to the stage, pull him in front of the staring crowd.

He should feel ashamed, he thinks maybe, of the blood and the bruises and his nakedness, of the people staring at him as if he were little more than a lump of meat, but all shame has been beaten and degraded out of him.

There is no fight left here. Submission hurts less. All that he has left is prayers.

_My Father, who art maybe listening, please, if thou hast any mercy, please, let it be someone kind– please, my Father, forsakest not thine angels, guard us and keep us, please, in thy mercy, protect us–_

He holds out little hope that his Father is listening.

They force him to his knees, bruises pressed against the warped wood floor, where so many others before him have knelt. Have shed their blood. Have been forsaken by their Father. Most hang their head, when faced with the crowd – he’s seen the rest of his kin that were in the same lot as him, Sarael and Jerachem, Inaiel, Lesius, Jophiel and Carasel, all brought to the stage with their hands cuffed behind their backs and their feet hobbled, seen them pushed to their knees – but he refuses them that one victory. They have taken all else from him, but they will not stop him watching.

He watches the crowd as the auctioneer raps on the podium for order, watches their faces. There are woman and men here from every walk of life; children, too. Families. They all stand there, staring at him, hungry. Every face there is hungry, wanting,  _greedy_ , and it turns his stomach to see so much hate in the faces of what are supposedly his Father’s greatest creation.

The auctioneer raps on the podium again, calls out, “Gabriel, bidding starting at $3,000,” and there is no murmur of interest at his name. Archangel or footsoldier, scholar, warrior, garrison leader – they are all the same in the eyes of these people. All guilty. All monsters, to be hated and feared for the way they have ravaged the Earth.

In his heart, he cannot find the strength to blame them. What his brothers have done to this world… the damage is unforgivable. These people have every right to be angry, to hate them. He would forgive them, if he could, but it’s been so long that he’s no longer sure of the difference between forgiveness and exhaustion, between absolution and apathy. He’s too tired to hate, though, and he hopes that’s nearly the same thing. As he watches the crowd, gaze stopping on each and every face, he hopes they know that – that they are forgiven, will always be forgiven, no matter how hard he tries to hate them. They have broken him, made him too worn out to do anything  _but_  forgive.

And that’s when he sees  _him_.

Standing the back, facing towards the door, moving away from the stage. Different, but undeniably  _him_ , and his heart nearly stops.  _Moving away_. No.

“Sam!” he screams, forgetting himself, “Samuel!”

They beat him. A sharp blow between the shoulders, between the wings, with the butt of the whip, a growl of, “shut the fuck up,” and he shudders, eyes widening in what’s only half surprise. The man doesn’t turn around, doesn’t stop walking, and Gabriel nearly chokes on his panic.

“Sammy!”

A strike across the lower back, catching the tips of his wings and opening old scabs, making him curl in on himself as the pain snakes white-hot and familiar, an old friend coiling up his spine. Still the man walks, barely more than a dark streak of human at the back of the hall through the blur settling over his eyes.

“Sam Winche-”

A blow to the face, cutting a welt into his cheek with the tip nearly catching his eye, and they gag him. Hard plastic, cold, forced between his teeth and into his mouth like the bit of a horse, the strap pinching at the corners of his mouth; he chokes through it, sobbing, trying to call out, trying to stop Sam Winchester, make him turn around. Sam would protect him, get him out, save him – maybe his Father is listening after all. Maybe.

The last thing he sees before the boot presses down on his neck, forces his face against the floor, is the dark shape of the man’s back outlined in the doorway.

_Samuel Winchester, who art maybe my last hope, I pray in the name of my Father that thou wouldst turn around– turn around, please, Sam, turn around–_

_Sam–_


End file.
